Talk:apple

Sandbox

Sorry about this. I changed Sandbox to apple to see what multiline data looked like in python and forgot to change the page name back.

Naturally it chose this time to actually write the page rather than throwing an exception. -- Moglex 09:07, 18 November 2006

Apple cheeks

What about the apple of the cheeks, the two round parts when people smile. Should we add that? 207.179.157.162 00:09, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

RFV

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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Rfv-sense: tree that grows apples. This is always apple tree, right? —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 23:02, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Unless citations can show otherwise, IMO yes you are right. Mglovesfun (talk) 01:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

[1], [2], [3], [4]. I'm pretty sure that it can also refer to the wood. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 01:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't see the second and the third ones, and the first and the fourth ones won't be much help until someone points out what the citations are. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:33, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

We have plum, damson, orange, quince etc all meaning the tree, just as "apple" on its own can refer to either the tree or the wood as well as the fruit. Why pick out this tree for rfv just because the word "tree" is often attached for clarity? I'd be happy to have a tag of something along the lines of mainly horticultural to the sense. Examples: [5], [6], [7] Dbfirs 10:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Passed as in widespread use, but the citations given above could be added to the entry if necessary. - -sche (discuss) 02:36, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Archived from RFV: January 2014

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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apple

Rfv-sense: A tree growing such fruit, of the genus Malus; the apple tree.

This was passed previously as in widespread use (Talk:apple), but I don't believe this to be an obvious case that should pass without citations. Some dictionaries do not have the sense. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:00, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

[8] [9] [10] [11] [12] --WikiTiki89 17:22, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

In the first quotation, the term "the apple" does not refer to an individual tree but rather to a species or kind. Ditto probably for other quotations, even though I cannot read the fifth one, so could you kindly at least copy the passages here, without the authors? I admit that we have a reference to the species or kind attested, but I still see no attestation for "apple" referring to an individual tree. Thus, "the apple tree" is probably attested, but "a tree growing such fruit" not so. Furthermore, the first quotation is from 1838, which leaves the question open as to whether this use is archaic. Therefore, providing years with the quotation would be useful as well. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:49, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The tree is the species. --WikiTiki89 17:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

"An apple tree" is an individual tree; "the apple", in "The apple grows spontaneously ...", is a species. The distinction needs to be made clear in the definition unless it can be shown that "apple" is used to refer to individual trees. A definition only referring to the species could read like this: "The species of tree Malus domestica; the apple tree". --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

In English, there is no distinction between an individual and a species. both "the apple" and "the apple tree" can refer to an individual tree or the species as a whole. --WikiTiki89 18:11, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: "In English, there is no distinction between an individual and a species": In each case of use in a sentence, you can see whether the reference is made to an individual tree or to the species. So I disagree. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:51, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Aren't there Latin terms or whatnot used in WikiSpecies to refer to specific species? That's the only time the English language would be used to specify a species. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

From the OED: a 1626 Bacon (T.) Oaks and beeches last longer than apples and pears.    1785 Martyn Rousseau's Bot. vii. (1794) 73 The pear and apple are‥two‥species of the same‥genus.    1940 E. Step Wayside & Woodland Trees 40 The Wild Apple has not the pyramidal form of the Wild Pear. --WikiTiki89 17:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure copying quotations directly from the OED is a good idea as far as copyvio. You could at best claim fair use. As for the content, only the 1626 quotation attests reference to individual trees as opposed to species. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

How is it copyvio? The OED doesn't hold a copyright on Francis Bacon and Thomas Martyn. --WikiTiki89 18:11, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The OED holds copyright on its selection of quotations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:51, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

(Intellectual property attorney hat on.) This would be an issue if we were copying dozens of examples of OED selections. For a single selected quote, this goes beyond even needing to invoke fair use and into de minimis territory. Cheers! (Intellectual property attorney hat off.) bd2412 T 17:57, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

<butting in>I like the economical, yet flexible pseudo-HTML approach.</butting in> DCDuring TALK 18:48, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it's something we should be real careful about. It's something it would be easy to get into a habit of, and I would think it more creative and unique, hence copyrightable, then definitions. On the other hand, better here then on in mainspace.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:49, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

• Please stop wasting other people's time. And don't trash English Wiktionary. Widespread use. DCDuring TALK 18:26, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I don't believe that using "apple" alone (rather than "apple tree") to refer to an individual apple tree is in widespread use. I request attesting quotations, at least in the form of passages copied here. Of course, I could also make the request characteristic of yourself that the quotations are placed in the mainspace or attestation namespace, properly formatted, but I really only ask for them so I can actually see what sentences are presented as attesting quotations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:51, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    I don't care what you don't believe. If you need to learn something more about English, hire a tutor, read more, or look it up, eg, at “apple”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. or, apparently, the OED. DCDuring TALK 18:57, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    Some more:

    • I want to plant two Apples and two Pears. What sorts can I get to fertilise each other?
    • Used to be apple orchards, used to be the river and irrigation ditches that watered the apples, used to be mining towns.
    • Below these, perhaps, are orchards, very ill-cared for, it must be admitted, to the eye which has just studied those of Kent, but none the less picturesque because of the irregular, leaning trunks of the apples and matted boughs smothered in lichen.

    Hope you're happy. --WikiTiki89 19:06, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    @DCDuring: We go by attesting quotations, not dictionaries, as you know. Macmillan does not have the sense[13]. MWO has the sense made as "also" part of their 1st sense[14], but they do not provide attesting quotations. The OED quotations provided above do not attest reference to an individual tree, only to the species. Collins has the def as the 1st sense, starting with "a", but it is unclear whether they mean the species or an individual tree of the species. The current Wiktionary entry is misleading the non-natives to believe it is usual to refer to an individual tree using the word "apple" alone, I think. The following NGram search is striking, I think: under an apple tree,under an apple at the Google Books Ngram Viewer..

    @Wikitiki: The quotations you have provided should do, I am afraid. I still wish Wiktionary would not convey the false impression to the reader that it is usual to refer to individual apple trees using the word "apple" alone. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:12, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    It is not false. As with so many uses of words, it depends on context, so that any usable dictionary could not possibly have all the subtleties that are perfectly natural to a native-speaker. It is not a question of being restricted to a specialized community of speakers either. We are not equipped to do the collocation frequency work that might give you additional, though still incomplete, clues about how a native speaker would use such words. You could do such work yourself to show us what an ideal dictionary entry, reflecting such subtleties, would look like. You may not wish to, of course, because the effort required for even the first draft for a single word, like apple, might occupy more than a day (week?). DCDuring TALK 19:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    To prevent a false impression, we can provide a usage note. Since corpus data suggests that that "apple" is rarely used to refer to an individual apple tree, and since this being the case was the impression of Internoob and Mglovesun at Talk:apple, who are native speakers, this could be enough to support our having a usage note. Or we could even phrase the sense line in such a way as not to mislead. So far, the reference to an individual apple tree is only attested as archaic anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:40, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    "It was these trees, apples far older and wilder than any planted by Johnny Appleseed, that Forsline wanted to show me." [15] That's 2001. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 19:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    One more such modern quotation and you would have this attested as sometimes being used in modern writing. And I believe you will be able to find such a quotation, given under an apple,under an apple tree at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., since there is still some gap between the line for "under an apple" and the line for "under an apple tree" in 2000. The gap is much wider in 1920, and massively wider in 1900. Assuming the definition of "archaic" from WT:Glossary#archaic, this would seem archaic. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:00, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    Just to correct myself: the most revealing search is under an apple,under an apple tree,under an apple-tree at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., in which 1900 looks much like 2000 in that the sum of the frequencies of the latter two terms is very close to the frequency of the first term. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:58, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

    To put another nail in the coffin, see this. Of course, there were loads of links to suitable uses in the archived rfv on the discussion page, but you had your agenda, so I doubt you bothered to check. I'm not sure about the relative frequencies, but apple and apple tree are equally natural and are pretty much interchangeable unless you want to be completely unambiguous. This is true in English for just about any fruit crop. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:16, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

    On further thought, there are some contexts where you would want to say apple tree, but many where it doesn't matter. It's not a property of any one term such as apple, but a property of terms for tree crops, in general. At any rate, it's a bit too subtle and complicated to explain in every entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:30, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

How is this not obvious? When I say "I'm planting an apple" and I'm holding an apple seed, it obviously means the tree and not the fruit. When I say "I'm planting an orange" and I'm holding an orange seed, it obviously means the tree and not the fruit. To say "I'm planting an apple" and have someone automatically assume I mean the fruit instead of the seed in my hand, would violate common sense. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

A little note about seeds. When I think of an "apple seed" I think of a "seed that comes from an apple fruit", rather than a "seed that grows an apple tree". Yes they refer to the same exact thing, but it's the image that matters. So you cannot say that in "apple seed", apple unambiguously refers to the tree. That just isn't the case. --WikiTiki89 21:16, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The attestation case is closed; the sense is attested even in reference to individual trees. Nonetheless, planting an apple,planting an apple tree,planting an apple-tree, planting an apple orchard at the Google Books Ngram Viewer. suggests again that "apple tree" is hugely predominant over "apple" when referring to apple trees; when you sum the frequencies of the three combinations, you arrive close to the frequency of the first term. I still believe the "widespread use" card was unjustified and evidence was needed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Relative frequency doesn't mean much here. Both are in common, widespread use. Neither is rare, and the subtleties of when not to use apple instead of apple tree aren't that easy to capture in a usage note. In most contexts, using one over the other is a matter of style and individual taste, not of any proscription. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:00, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The only evidence that I have and that I have posted above suggests that using "apple" alone to refer to an apple tree is very rare in the written corpus. I do not know about spoken English. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

If you went into a farming shop. You would hear "apple" referring to the tree much more than "apple tree". It is not rare, it's just contextual. --WikiTiki89 21:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Gosh, it's rare in the written corpus as per evidence. If you have a contrary evidence, please present it. Comment is free, and opinions are the cheapest stuff in the world. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

You said you don't have access to any corpus of the spoken language. Well all of us who live in English speaking countries do, every day when we go outside. The fact that every English speaker here has attested to the fact that the term is in widespread use shows you that it is in widespread use. You are exactly the type of person who should be benefiting from this information, not fighting it. --WikiTiki89 21:31, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

That is anecdotal evidence. Against that I have the anecdotal evidence of two native speakers on Talk:apple who supported the notion that you usually say "apple tree" in reference to apple tree; one of them went so far as to RFV the sense. So as for "every English speaker here has attested to the fact that the term is in widespread use", that is true for this RFV, not for the previous one. Therefore, I do have a reason to believe that using "apple" alone might sound unnatural to some native speakers; I have no solid evidence to believe otherwise. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:40, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it's regional. I live in an area with a lot of apple orchards (New England) and (used to) go apple picking fairly often. Crab apples grow on the streets here and some people have apple trees in their backyards. --WikiTiki89 21:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

It might be partly a US thing, though Dbfirs is from northern England the same as Mglovesfun. At any rate, both tyre and tire are in clear widespread use and I wouldn't rfv either of them, even though I've haven't seen the former much at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:16, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

At least one of the quotations I found above (the one with "leaning trunks of the apples") is from England. --WikiTiki89 22:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

If Dan wants another modern usage, how about "The espalier and cordon are restricted forms well suited to the training of apples and pears" from "Topiary And The Art Of Training Plants" (- Page 119) by David Joyce (1999). I'm sure we can find lots more on similar lines if necessary. I'd be happy with a "Chiefly horticultural" or similar tag, but such usage is not rare, just less common than the fruit. Dbfirs 15:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• RFV passed. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 17:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)